I was at the Westwood (CA) Trader Joe's and was pleasantly surprised to see the store had become still more Tiki and now features price tags/product tags which state: "Tiki Joe's."
I also noticed several of the male employees sporting kakui nut leis.
Maybe a Tiki Joe's product line is in the future?

On 2007-11-25 12:16, TikiDeke wrote:Reportedly, Oceanic Arts does a lot of the Trader Joe's signage.....

Also, Tiki Joe's has retained the talents of our own TikiDiablo, if I recall correctly.
It really is astounding (although not necessarily surprising) how Trader Joe's has embraced Tiki - and appropriately so.

After all, Trader Joe's does have the Trader Giotto product line, so just as easily they could have embraced a Venetian theme, complete with Gondolas, St. Marcos replicas, clocktowers and employees in striped shirts.

In an effort to promote more visual documentation on Tiki Central, a while back I went around and photographed the various Trader Joe's in the L.A. neighborhoods I frequent: I shop in Burbank and Toluca Lake because of my Naomi, and in Eagle Rock because of my son Diego's school. Ironically my own T.J's in Silverlake has not one Tiki face in it.

The Burbank Trader Joe's has the some of the better nouveaux Tiki touches of all of them. Here's the entrance:

Here's their plastic bamboo bag recycling can. It would make a good ice ice bucket for outdoor Tiki parties:

The cash registers have some well done flat sculpt Tiki signs above them:

Here's quite an elaborate painting explaining the concept of the helmsperson:

And here are some cartoony signs that were done by a sign painter that also did some for the Toluca Lake store:

While maybe not the best Tiki renderings, the Toluca Lake store gets an A for its elaborate entrance installation:

...though I am not partial to heroic renderings of trailblazing hummers:

Here's another artsy sign, with a Party City Tiki border in the background:

The Toluca Lake store even has Tiki detail in it price tags:

The Eagle Rock store unfortunately gets the least favorable review in terms of Tiki design execution ( but it is great to shop in because it is never crowded! ). While the interior signs are OK:

...the exterior murals are just frightfully off, in color AND design:

...a parrot Tiki?

This guy was a play on the summer shopping bag Tiki:

All in all it is quite astonishing how Tiki has appeared in my daily world in places where it has never been before. I am glad that my favorite grocery chain's theme-ing coincides with my favorite hobby. Now if they only could stick to their low prices...

This year's reusable shopping bags (the ones that had a hibiscus print last year) don't have any tikis on them, but they've got a really cool surf design.

Although I could find no evidence of Crazy Al, the Alameda store has a lot of tiki touches (unfortunately including that Party City border around most of the walls). I'll try to remember my camera next time I go.